The officer is lucky his sergeant was nearby to stop this illegal detainment otherwise he could have been in a heap of trouble. In order for this officer to conduct a threshold inquiry he would have needed reasonable suspicion that a crime had taken place. Fortunately, carrying a firearm, holstered, on hip, in an open carry state, does not meet the criteria. This video is going viral now, and it is interesting to me how many folks out there are vilifying this young man for knowing the laws and his rights.

This is not Nazi Germany, folks. The "Papers... Let me see your Papers’” stuff doesn’t fly here. We should be proud of this kid.

The Nazis, at any given moment or whim, could demand identification from anyone. Here we have a strict and rather brilliant set of rules that makes us free. That’s part of what makes this country so great.

Well, then it was a poor choice of a comparison by you, because Nazis asking for papers is so deeply rooted in race. I'd suggest you just admit it so that people can move on with the conversation.

Agreed. Bringing up the Nazis was a needless comparison, tbh. A sensitive topic for CelticsBlog

The officer is lucky his sergeant was nearby to stop this illegal detainment otherwise he could have been in a heap of trouble. In order for this officer to conduct a threshold inquiry he would have needed reasonable suspicion that a crime had taken place. Fortunately, carrying a firearm, holstered, on hip, in an open carry state, does not meet the criteria. This video is going viral now, and it is interesting to me how many folks out there are vilifying this young man for knowing the laws and his rights.

This is not Nazi Germany, folks. The "Papers... Let me see your Papers’” stuff doesn’t fly here. We should be proud of this kid.

Comparing a policeman earnestly attempting to keep the peace and protect the citizens in his care to Nazi Germany sounds like overkill to me, even if he was in the wrong here.

I think you, or someone has posted this video before. I remember just hating that kid behind the camera with the heat of a thousand suns. It's not a new video..maybe I saw it on Facebook.

Also, how come the kids in these videos are always smug white kids? I wonder if the outrage would be the same if it were a smug black guy in a neighborhood with a history of gang activity being stopped. Or it were a white kid within a block of a school in a trenchcoat.

But apparently doing it in a nice neighborhood in Portland Maine makes you an altruistic activist looking out for your constitutional rights.

A policeman trying to keep peace and protect folks from what? The kid was walking down the street in an open carry state. That is NOT grounds for detainment. You are reading too into the Nazi Germany comment.

Id guess the policeman responding to calls from worried civilians was attempting to make sure the guy trolling around Portland Me with an exposed firearm wasn't unhinged and looking for trouble. I don't know how familiar you are with Portland but in my experience there, that's a bit of an outlier. It's hardly an overreach to stop the guy and talk to him for a minute. Lets not pretend this was anything but an attempt to entrap a police officer in a smug facsimile of political protest.

you're right. I saw this on Facebook a while ago, and confused it with the other guy scaring civilians and attempting to entrap police officers.

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And to bring RACE into it is appropriate? To me that’s irrelevant.

It's not so much the race thing I was trying to highlight as the fact that these videos are always so similar. White kid, nice neighborhood, gives cops a hard time so he can put it on YouTube. My speculation was whether or not it would be as well received under different circumstances.

Meh, IDK, I've walked around the town I live in with an open firearm holstered to my hip and never once been detained.

If the guy was pacing up and down the street aimlessly, just waiting to be detained, that seems a little out-of-bounds.

The police officer was obviously in the wrong for attempting to take his firearm and demand indentification, but why do people feel the need to do this? Seems like all it does is serve to make gun owners look bad. As if we need any more negative attention right now.

You’re whole outlook on this is disappointing to me, IP. I mean, your characterization is just so negative and assumption based. Entrapment? That the actions by this man are just self-serving to become famous on youtube? I think that’s unfair. To A LOT of people these rights are important. There’s an old saying: “If you don't exercise your rights you will lose them.” So some folks are exercising their rights, bringing awareness and trying to soften the issue by open carrying. Watch MarkedGuardian and you will see a transformation taking place in Oregon. While I couldn’t prove less folks are reporting, the police are certainly handling things differently: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olPkAYsNmQY&feature=player_profilepage

It’s working.

I mean, do you have this type of disdain for all protestors or just ones that don’t meet your own ideology?

A local police officer in Mass stopped me on the street because he thought I committed a crime and when I asked him what he thought I did or why he literally said "Do you want a boyfriend in Middleton!?" (meaning the prison). I laughed at him.

I've had similar situations. And sure, it's not a big offense going on here, but who cares? We pay police officers wages, we shouldn't be hassled by them and we certainly shouldn't be talked to with zero respect.

It's not so much the race thing I was trying to highlight as the fact that these videos are always so similar. White kid, nice neighborhood, gives cops a hard time so he can put it on YouTube. My speculation was whether or not it would be as well received under different circumstances.

Who cares what color his skin is? Black people and any other race should all learn their rights as well. It's an irrelevant statement to make. Not sure what you're getting at.

Commonly I have this disdain for all protestors. Or most, anyways. At least those who go about it as stupidly and as selfishly as the people making these half-hearted attempts at entrapping public servants by trolling citizens in order to get a reaction out of police they can put on YouTube.

Commonly I have this disdain for all protestors. Or most, anyways. At least those who go about it as stupidly and as selfishly as the people making these half-hearted attempts at entrapping public servants by trolling citizens in order to get a reaction out of police they can put on YouTube.

Maybe "public servants" should treat the people who pay their wages with some respect. And respect their rights.

And "disdain for all protestors"... really? We would be living in a real bad country if it wasn't for protestors. Not saying I agree with all of it but it's the public's best outlet in our country and probably the epitome of what is right with our system. Mass protests right now might accomplish the things we need to change.

Commonly I have this disdain for all protestors. Or most, anyways. At least those who go about it as stupidly and as selfishly as the people making these half-hearted attempts at entrapping public servants by trolling citizens in order to get a reaction out of police they can put on YouTube.

Maybe "public servants" should treat the people who pay their wages with some respect. And respect their rights.

And "disdain for all protestors"... really? We would be living in a real bad country if it wasn't for protestors. Not saying I agree with all of it but it's the public's best outlet in our country and probably the epitome of what is right with our system. Mass protests right now might accomplish the things we need to change.

It's just my opinion, but generally I find protests to be tedious. I don't mind the hippies on the corner on a Saturday with a 'honk for peace' sign, but when the town Inwas living in at the time (Potsdam, NY) had a series of 'occupy' protests during the week, it made me laugh out loud.

I'm paraphrasing from memory here, but did you know that many of the modern gun laws we've been slowly rolling back for decades were reactions to Black Panthers carrying guns in protests, climaxing on the steps of the capital on California? Passed while regan was gov IIRC. Maybe Im not 'RCing' correctly, but Im pretty sure that's how it happened.

And also, while we're on the topic of protests, notice Im not talking about the kid's right to an open carry. My disagreement is the matter of how he decided to exercise those rights. An organized peaceful protest where the goals and message were clearly outlined Id have no disagreement with. People would know why a bunch of white guys with pistols exposed to the world were all hanging out together. They'd probably have signs.

This was a kid who used subterfuge to put a policeman on blast who was responding to the calls of scared civilians. That's my issue with this brave would-be revolutionary.

But a number of cases hold, or intimate, that if the tip, though only weakly corroborated in the sense just explained, is that a person is armed, the police are entitled to stop the person and search him for the gun. Armed persons are so dangerous to the peace of the community that the police should not be forbidden to follow up a tip that a person is armed, and as a realistic matter this will require a stop in all cases. For suppose DeBerry had made no threatening gesture but had simply denied in answer to the officer's question that he had a gun. Could the officer have left it at that? Or should he have asked for consent to frisk DeBerry and if DeBerry refused, insisted? The answers implicitly given by the cases we have cited are “no” and “yes,” respectively. We think these answers strike the proper balance between the right of the people to be let alone and their right to be protected from armed predators.

The case is from Illinois (no open or concealed carry), so it is not exactly on point with your discussion, but the basic take away is; it is not illegal for a cop to ask questions, it would be illegal to detain the guy without reasonable suspicion of a crime.

The video is dumb. The guy is going to get his 15 minutes of fame, but at the same time he just gave a lot of political leverage to the groups that oppose open carry laws.

Comparing a policeman earnestly attempting to keep the peace and protect the citizens in his care to Nazi Germany sounds like overkill to me, even if he was in the wrong here.

I think you, or someone has posted this video before. I remember just hating that kid behind the camera with the heat of a thousand suns. It's not a new video..maybe I saw it on Facebook.

Also, how come the kids in these videos are always smug white kids? I wonder if the outrage would be the same if it were a smug black guy in a neighborhood with a history of gang activity being stopped. Or it were a white kid within a block of a school in a trenchcoat.

But apparently doing it in a nice neighborhood in Portland Maine makes you an altruistic activist looking out for your constitutional rights.

Comparing a policeman earnestly attempting to keep the peace and protect the citizens in his care to Nazi Germany sounds like overkill to me, even if he was in the wrong here.

I think you, or someone has posted this video before. I remember just hating that kid behind the camera with the heat of a thousand suns. It's not a new video..maybe I saw it on Facebook.

Also, how come the kids in these videos are always smug white kids? I wonder if the outrage would be the same if it were a smug black guy in a neighborhood with a history of gang activity being stopped. Or it were a white kid within a block of a school in a trenchcoat.

But apparently doing it in a nice neighborhood in Portland Maine makes you an altruistic activist looking out for your constitutional rights.

A policeman trying to keep peace and protect folks from what? The kid was walking down the street in an open carry state. That is NOT grounds for detainment. You are reading too into the Nazi Germany comment.

He was responding to emergency calls.... It's his job to go out and INVESTIGATE the situation. That's much different than detaining him for suspicion of a crime. The officer should definitely be allowed to ask questions such as if he's old enough to carry, where he's going/what he's doing walking on the street, whether or not he's been convicted of a felony etc. For all we know he could've been carrying his gun around because he had a psychotic break, which would've become apparent during investigation.

And to take it a step further, I think cops should be allowed to ask for ID if the kid starts deflecting questions and acting suspicious or out of the norm like this (not even giving his first name and acting arrogant/spouting off statutes and cases an officer obviously wouldn't know about). At the end of the day no policeman is going to detain you or confiscate your weapon without suspicion so I don't think a few minutes talking to him is a huge price to pay. If you don't like it, conceal your weapon or get a license to like the majority of other people in the country.

This kid could have just robbed a place a few blocks away and it hadn't been called in yet. It's ridiculous to say the officer had no right to be involved here.

Clearly there aren't tons of other guys walking the street, exercising their right to open carry in this neighborhood if they're getting calls from people that feel nervous enough about a holstered pistol.

The officer is lucky his sergeant was nearby to stop this illegal detainment otherwise he could have been in a heap of trouble. In order for this officer to conduct a threshold inquiry he would have needed reasonable suspicion that a crime had taken place. Fortunately, carrying a firearm, holstered, on hip, in an open carry state, does not meet the criteria. This video is going viral now, and it is interesting to me how many folks out there are vilifying this young man for knowing the laws and his rights.

This is not Nazi Germany, folks. The "Papers... Let me see your Papers’” stuff doesn’t fly here. We should be proud of this kid.